KILLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — German ski racer Lena Duerr led after the first run of the Killington Cup slalom on Sunday in a race Mikaela Shiffrin sat out following a hard crash the day before in the giant slalom.

Duerr finished her run in 53.87 seconds and was 0.11 seconds ahead of Anna Swenn Larsson of Sweden, the winner of the Killington slalom in 2022. Camille Rast of Switzerland was in third place.

The 33-year-old Duerr has never won the Killington Cup slalom — a title held by Shiffrin for six of the seven years the race has run. Duerr finished fourth in the Killington slalom last year and ended the season as runner-up to Shiffrin in the World Cup slalom standings. In her 16-year World Cup career, Duerr has won only two races, and a decade apart — a city event in 2013 and a slalom in 2023.

Duerr has long finished second to the standouts of slalom, Shiffrin and Petra Vlhova of Slovakia. One of these two women have won just about every slalom for over a decade. But Vlhova is still recovering from a crash and knee surgery last winter, and Shiffrin is sidelined with a puncture wound to her abdomen and severe muscle trauma from Saturday’s crash.

With Vlhova and Shiffrin out, the 2024 Killington Cup slalom title was wide open.

Rast earned her first World Cup slalom podium last weekend in Gurgl, Austria, and her first World Cup giant slalom podium Saturday at Killington. She finished third in both the Gurgl slalom and Killington giant slalom.

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